


The Lock

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Romance, Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 21:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5942983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a curl behind his ear, teasing and elusive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lock

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

There's a curl behind his ear, a soft golden thread, which he plays with when he's reading. It's a longish curl, and it twines around his finger unconsciously; he is unaware that he sits and plays with it, while his eyes and other hand are occupied in a book, or a magazine, or a particularly difficult letter. The hair itself seems more sentient that he does on evenings like this, the small golden curl seems to swirl and flutter, appears to try and escape that long brown finger as it plays with it, and like James used to do with the Snitch, he almost frees it, and the hair nearly reaches the safety of his neck before it's trapped once more and tortured into a corkscrew helix.

I've tried to find that curl. At night, when he's asleep, I push his hair aside and search for it, I threadle my fingers through his tumbled, loved in locks, ragged and tangled, and I comb it through, make it sweet and ordered, and he never wakes. But the curl is shy of me, it knows I seek it and when I'm that close, it's never there. There are others locks, other skeins of his, which vie for my attention and they can't understand why I don't choose them, for they smell like him, they shine the same way the missing curl shines, golden and silver and bronze all at once and all together, and not yet any of those colours. They twist and slip and tempt and I taste them all with my tongue, but it is not the same. I test them with my own hand, twisting them around my finger to see if any of them are pretending not to be the one I seek - Where better to hide than amongst your fellows, after all - but none of them are a spiral, none of them gleams with the hidden knowledge than it will never, ever be found.

It teases me, just as he does himself, in the dark of our passion, as he throws his head from side to side with that guttural sound he makes deep in the back of his throat and he calls my name as if I'm lost somewhere in the dark instead of right here beside him, loving him and watching his face twist with pleasure and sweetness. Then that curl will peep out from behind his ear and wink into the candlelight for a brief brown moment but when I put my hand up to hold it, it's as if my hand slips straight through and I never connect.

So I content myself with the knowledge that it is there, and I watch him touch it, and I watch the curl laugh for the possession I lack. And I wonder why he sits and reads instead of coming to kiss me and I wonder why the curl annoys me so, and I wonder why he cries when I'm sitting right here beside him.

Perhaps, the curl could tell me. If I could only find it.


End file.
